WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Alternativa Libertaria/FdCA #22: "Historia magistra vitae" - "History is the teacher of life". (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

This is a very schematic reduction of a broader Latin phrase (1) which
has sometimes given rise to mechanistic interpretations, as has happened
among theorists of socialism and in the history of the Italian and
international workers' movement. ---- In reality, if in history it is
possible to find the references to comprehensively understand the
present and to define and update our theoretical, strategic and
organizational identity, it is essential that this research is conducted
with a scientific method as history is a articulated, complex,
contradictory and deceptive phenomenon, the superficial or partial
consideration of which can lead to error and mystification, sometimes
even conscious: examples galore, precisely in reference to current
information in its broadest sense, for which the system Capitalism
continues to appear to be the only future prospect, despite the horrors
that arise from it.
In fact, considering the war in its objective extension; considering the
migrant masses made up of human beings fleeing war and poverty in search
of better conditions of existence; considering the insensitivity and
violence with which this humanity is rejected, putting their very lives
at risk, precisely by the states that boast "the most beautiful
constitutions in the world" which, to deny any right to asylum, set up
refugee camps abroad , as our government believed it could do by
agreeing with Albania; considering the environmental destruction and
pollution as a consequence of the capitalist management of the territory
for which the air, water and environment are poisoned and every storm
turns into a flood (see lastly the most recent and dramatic events in
Emilia Romagna and Tuscany) due to the widespread and lavishly
profitable cement construction carried out to the detriment of
environmental and urban maintenance; considering the decline in the
material conditions of work, wages, essential social services and
therefore the living conditions of our class; considering the fascist,
homophobic, patriarchal and racist resurgences, which weaken to the
point of nullification historical conquests regarding the rights and
protection of women and all the weakest social components of society,
well: all these phenomena constitute the cusp of a widespread and
violent intolerance against everything that is different and that in any
case claims its own autonomy which, even in everyday life, is repressed
with violent and murderous practices, as the resurgence of feminicides
dramatically and bloody demonstrates.
In this dramatic setting we find ourselves faced with indisputable
facts, which the widespread sources of information of imperialism
skillfully dematerialize into opinions: thus history becomes the "life
teacher" of capitalism and imperialism themselves and is aimed at
perpetrating the their domain.
In such a context, the very concept of "people" must be understood in
its real interclass meaning, understood in the qualifying and
non-derogatory sense of the term.
The people are in fact an entity made up of social and class strata
having different interests.
It is therefore a contradictory entity in that it expresses opposing
power relations which nevertheless define a dominant social result. In
our capitalist system this social result is the bourgeoisie, that is to
say a class that does not produce but retains, accumulates and uses for
its own exclusive and particular advantage the social wealth produced by
another internationalized and universal class which is the proletariat.
It is not the people in the abstract who create their own state, but it
is the dominant bourgeois classes who, in concrete terms, equip
themselves with the economic, legal and political institutions capable
of planning and replicating their condition of material and intellectual
supremacy over the entire society.
On the other hand, paraphrasing Marx "The ideas of the dominant class
are the dominant ideas in every era;[...]. The dominant ideas are
nothing other than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relations,[...]they are therefore the the expression of the
relationships that make a class the dominant class, and therefore are
the ideas of its domination".
This last consideration, ancient in time but very appropriate to
understand and counter the lies that are fed to us every day, explains
the economic and social dynamics through which a historically oppressed
people can become, in turn, oppressors of other peoples.: This is a
social and class dynamic that characterizes the factions that are
bloodily facing each other in Ukraine, Gaza and in all the other
widespread wars of capital, in the framework of imperialist competition
between powers for control of the world market.
This last consideration that is too often removed pushes us to
re-propose theoretical contributions from exponents historically
extraneous to the traditional "anarchist milieu", but which nevertheless
constitute fixed points for orienting our action in the present.
We refer to the text "The crisis of social democracy"(2) that Rosa
Luxemburg wrote in prison in April 1915, when the world and humanity
were overwhelmed by the first imperialist world war.
A text that recovers older indications, already dating back to the
theorists of socialism and anarchism, updated and re-proposed by R. L.
with admirable clarity and which send us back to the present in its
devastating manifestations: economic crisis; war; increased
exploitation; degradation of work; growing and widespread poverty;
marginalization of the weakest strata of society; environmental
devastation; progressive suppression of historical achievements relating
to individual and collective freedoms and protections; crisis of trade
unionism and representativeness; authoritarian drift of bourgeois
democracy; fascist and racist regurgitations, together with the
devastating manifestation of patriarchy and militarism.
"The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether the
proletariat... knows how to throw its revolutionary sword onto the
scales... either progress towards socialism or regression into
barbarism... the triumph of imperialism leads to 'annihilation of
civilization..."(3)
These very brief but effective quotations, extrapolated from an overall
text that is over a century old, are still valid today precisely because
they refer not only to the need, however necessary, to document the
horrors perpetrated by capitalism in its imperialistic dimension and
today dramatically replicated in current news, but also to the need to
evolve from the warning that emerges from these few words and which is a
clear strategic indication that anarchist communism has always picked
up: "socialism or barbarism".
Barbarism is present around us because "imperialist politics is not the
work of one or some states, it is the product of a certain degree of
maturation in the global development of capital, an international
phenomenon by definition, an indivisible whole, which can be recognize
in all its mutual relationships and from which no single state can
escape".(4)
Horror is around us, it hits us with all its deadly shock which cannot
be immediately contained: despite the protests and mobilizations against
the growing environmental devastation; despite the widespread anti-war
mobilizations for the desirable requests for an immediate cessation of
the fighting and the systematic massacre of the population of Gaza by
the Israeli army coming from the streets all over the world, because in
every war the first innocent victims are precisely the populations , and
we don't shoot at civilian populations.
But in this desperate setting we also have another task, that of
indicating the ways for the liberation of humanity from the slavery of
capital, from its wars and its devastation. We know well that the paths
of awareness are the most difficult and for this reason we believe we
should replicate another teaching, which is a very current strategic
indication coming from the history of our class (5) and in this sense,
for us, "History is the teacher of life":
Never in world history is there? was it a task anymore? urgent, more?
high, more? noble; its realization must be our common work. No sacrifice
and? too great, no burden too heavy to achieve this goal: the
restoration of peace among peoples.
Workers, mothers and fathers, widows and orphans, wounded and maimed, to
all of you who suffer from war and because of war, we cry out: Above all
borders, above the battlefields, beyond there? of the countryside and
the cities? devastated:
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Note
1) The complete phrase turns out to be: "History is in truth a witness
to the times, the light of truth, the life of memory, a teacher of life,
a messenger of antiquity". (Cicero, De Oratore, II, 9, 36)
2) Rosa Luxemburg: "The crisis of social democracy" in R. L. "Scritti
Politici", Rome 1970.
3) Ibid., op. cit.
4) Ibid., op. cit.
5) Taken from: "Poster of the Zimmerwald Conference", 5/8 September 1915.

Il Cantiere n. 20 ottobre 2023 ilcantiere@autistici.org

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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